My wife and I wanted to get outside and go for a hike. The place we decided on was Island Lake. It is about 2 hours outside of Sacramento and is a pretty quick and easy hike. I had heard that there are Brooke Trout in Island Lake and this caught my attention. I have never targeted Brooke Trout specifically, but was excited to give it a try. I have heard from other anglers that Brookies are fairly easy to catch and I thought this was going to be great because I was going to have a little time to fish. I took a multiple flies and planned on uses some different standard woolly buggers and some nymphs.
We got to the park around 10 am, I got my gear together and we started on the hike. The hike was pretty easy. I little bit of an uphill climb, but really not too bad. The hike from the parking lot was probably 1.5 to 2 miles long. When we got to the lake it was absolutely beautiful. The water was a gorgeous blue color and the scenery was terrific. Truly one of the most beautiful lakes I have been to.
Any who, on the hike to the lake I noticed that there were a lot of grasshoppers so I tried fishing with a Hopper pattern which was not my original plan. There really weren’t any rises going on so I switched over to a wet fly, black bead head woolly bugger. I didn’t have any success with it. I switch to a white zonker. Still no success. I tries a few other things but only had about an hour and a half to fish and wasn’t able to come up with anything.
Given the time that I got there and not seeing much activity on the water, the odds really were not in my favor. However, now that I have been to Island Lake and had a chance to scope it out a bit, I would like to bring my float tube and give it another try in the future. There is another lake that is somewhat near Island Lake, named Penner Lake. I have heard many good things about Penner Lake from a few different anglers. I think next time I am going to have to make the longer hike to Penner Lake and possibly make an overnight trip out of it.
We got to the park around 10 am, I got my gear together and we started on the hike. The hike was pretty easy. I little bit of an uphill climb, but really not too bad. The hike from the parking lot was probably 1.5 to 2 miles long. When we got to the lake it was absolutely beautiful. The water was a gorgeous blue color and the scenery was terrific. Truly one of the most beautiful lakes I have been to.
Any who, on the hike to the lake I noticed that there were a lot of grasshoppers so I tried fishing with a Hopper pattern which was not my original plan. There really weren’t any rises going on so I switched over to a wet fly, black bead head woolly bugger. I didn’t have any success with it. I switch to a white zonker. Still no success. I tries a few other things but only had about an hour and a half to fish and wasn’t able to come up with anything.
Given the time that I got there and not seeing much activity on the water, the odds really were not in my favor. However, now that I have been to Island Lake and had a chance to scope it out a bit, I would like to bring my float tube and give it another try in the future. There is another lake that is somewhat near Island Lake, named Penner Lake. I have heard many good things about Penner Lake from a few different anglers. I think next time I am going to have to make the longer hike to Penner Lake and possibly make an overnight trip out of it.
